As you’ve probably guessed, we’re fans of modern dance, from World Order to enthusiastic otaku to Kenichi Ebina. Of course, traditional dance is very cool as well, but we have to admit we have a particular soft spot for the many modern dance groups you can find around the world, and so we felt compelled to share a new video released this month that shows off some of the coolest modern dancers we’ve ever seen.

Featuring a collaboration between the Dancing Strawhats and Koharu Sugawara, you definitely won’t want to miss this video!

The responsibilities of promotional models fall almost entirely into the categories of “stand there” and “look pretty,” and while the first function seems pretty easy, maybe that’s for the best. After all, there’s actually a lot of effort, encompassing fitness, diet, and grooming regimens, that goes into meeting the “look pretty” requirement, and there’s not always much time left over to work on much else.

Case in point: Someone decided to try to add a bit of kinetic energy to this car show booth by having the team of models dance, but their comically awkward gyrations suggest “stand there” might have been the better option.

Kabuki is well-known around the world as one of Japan’s most distinct forms of traditional theatre. The elaborate costumes, dramatic makeup and stylised poses have been captivating audiences for more than four centuries, yet when it comes to finding out what goes on behind-the-scenes, very few people have been able to step behind the curtain.

Now, one of today’s most popular kabuki stars is keen to change all that by letting the world share his dressing room, follow his daily routine and even peek inside his family home. Come with us as we take a look at some of the fascinating photos from Ebizo Ichikawa XI, one of Japan’s most revered cultural icons.

If you’ve ever visited Japan, surely you’ve ridden on at least one of the many Japan Railway (JR) train lines, where you probably noticed the serious and stoic faces of the company’s conductors and staff. So it might be hard to imagine that JR Kyushu has it’s own very energetic, award-winning yosakoi dance oendan, or cheering squad, that frequently competes in some of the biggest yosakoi traditional dance festivals around the country.

This past weekend the JR Kyushu Oentai performed and won the top prize at the Sapporo YOSAKOI Soran Festival in Hokkaido (Japan’s northern-most island), and as soon as footage and pictures of their performance hit the internet, Japanese netizens were abuzz about just how cool the group looked.

This is hands down (or up, in this case), the most fun you can have at a games arcade in Japan.

The maimai music game cabinet by entertainment giant Sega may look like a front-loading washing machine, but rest assured it is actually way more entertaining. In a game that’s a cross between a whack-a-mole and Dance Dance Revolution, players follow a sequence of hand movements in time with a frantic beat.

If a recent spate of performances by Japanese dance groups, “talent” stars and other Japanese artists who brought the house down on Western television is any indication, the west may finally once again be catching on to “Cool Japan” – that tagline the country’s tourism board wants so desperately to sell abroad – after a long hiatus.

Of course, we all know and adore Baby Metal by now, Hatsune Miku had that awkward appearance on Letterman (which arguably may have hurt Japan’s pop culture image more than anything) and our adorable friend Mininja seems poised for foreign fame any day now, but that’s just scratching the surface of Japanese performers catching on abroad. And the number of artists waiting in line for their chance to shinein foreign lands is only growing, as evidenced by an increasing number of Japanese hopefuls on shows like Asia’s Got Talent, such as this super cool dance troupe hailing from Tokyo who recently brought the house down on the show.

Whether it be Japan’s Golden Week, America’s Memorial Day or any other national holidays in the spring, the draw of good weather and free time calls people out of their homes. Who could resist a nice drive under blue skies, while not having to think about usual daily responsibilities? Probably no one on the planet.

On May 1, China celebrated Labor Day, a national holiday. Free from work, people headed out. If you haven’t heard, China has a lot of people, so with nearly everyone having a day off, you can only imagine what the traffic was like! While most people would let heavy traffic ruin their day, some Chinese people who were stuck in an infinity-long line of traffic decided to not let the situation get them down and instead brought the party on to the road.

Funkiness broke out on a congested highway outside Kunming City, Yunnan Province, on 22 April. As a car accident brought traffic to a standstill, thousands of motorists found themselves stranded on the asphalt with no escape in sight.

So they did all anyone could do at a time like that: get their groove on.

The flight attendants of Japan Airlines (JAL) put on their best idol costumes to dance to Hatsune Miku’s “39” (San-kyuu, or ‘Thank You’) song to promote the company’s participation at the Niconico Chokaigi 2015 event this month.

The video shows the dancers in various spots within the JAL Sky Museum in Tokyo. In the background you can see how the attendant’s uniforms have changed throughout time.

Believe it or not, Korean music hasn’t always been as upbeat, stylish and danceable as the K-Pop we now know so well. It wasn’t until after a revolutionary artist brought R&B and hip-hop to Korea in the early 1990s, K-Pop became the wildly popular world-wide sensation it is today.

With the desire to share their culture with their non-Korean peers, a group of students from American university Wheaton College put together a dance medley showcasing the “Evolution of K-Pop” spanning the years 1994-2014.

If you’re a fan of the internet, then chances are you saw this YouTube video a few years back of Marquese Scott, otherwise known as NONSTOP, performing his mesmerizing “animation” style of dance. It may look like fancy camera tricks, but nope, he can actually just dance like he has no bones.

Thanks to that video, NONSTOP is now world famous, and he recently traveled to Japan to do a collaboration with the entertainment group Team Black Starz. Together they created something beautiful: a video of NONSTOP going around Japan, inspiring salarymen, old dudes, and homeless people to breakdance with the power of his magic sunglasses.

In 2013, the Gwiyomi Song (or Kiyomi Song), a Korean song with cutesy gestures, started a Gwiyomi craze that saw Korean netizens uploading videos of themselves dancing to the catchy cutie tune. The song went on to become an internet meme and eventually went viral in several parts of Asia. Don’t worry if you’ve never heard of it, because the trend has since died down and a new wave is coming!

Slated to be the successor of the viral hit, the Heart Dance is the new cutesy trend that has been rapidly gaining popularity in Korea. If you like all things cute, prepare to have your heart stolen by this adorable little dance!

Wotagei, Japan’s unusual form of otaku dancing, is spreading across the seas and capturing the hearts of foreign idol and anime fans, causing them to contort their bodies in strange but rhythmic formations. Read on for more about this unique performance art and watch some videos of afficionados in action.

How many ways can people display their love for Frozen? It seems like we’ve exhausted all the options. In order to get noticed in the digital age, some are probably trying to ride the coattails of the movie’s popularity. With so many tributes, parodies, interpretations and whatnot, it’s hard to sort through what is worth your precious internet minutes.

A dance troupe in Japan wants you to watch their Frozen performance and they guarantee it won’t be a waste of your time. How do they know? It starts with one simple word: cross-dressing.

An internet star was born yet again recently, this time surfacing in the deep south of China. As the legend goes, a traveler one day stumbled upon a farmer dancing most unusually amongst the lush greenery of the countryside and whipped out his camera to capture the scene.

After hitting the internet in China, the mysterious dancer was quickly crowned “The King of Farmers”. His incredibly tight moves, which mimic the King of Pop’s repertoire almost perfectly, drew acclaim from around the country, and his fame has only continued to grow since with a YouTube video earning him respect from all corners of the world.

Just when we thought Japan might possibly have had enough of Disney’s Frozen, what with the balloon art and the convenience store snacks and the limited edition PlayStation 4 and darn it, it might as well be winter seeing as how EVERYTHING IS FROZEN ALREADY – along comes an adorable, androgynous cosplaying dancer to breathe new life into our movie-spinoff-weary existence.

This is IG, and he’s the frontman of our new favourite thing: a kooky rendition of Ari no mama de (the Japanese version of ‘Let it go’) choreographed by CRE8BOY. Join us for a video delight that’ll melt even the most cynical icy heart.

Here at RocketNews24 there’s nothing we like more on a man (or indeed a woman) than a dashing fundoshi. While we believe the traditional Japanese underwear that’s part-apron, part-loincloth is suitable for any occasion, we’re prepared to accept that they’re mainly seen at matsuri (festivals) these days.

So when we found this wondrous video of a group of men doing a special festival bird-catching dance in fundoshi, we knew we were in for a treat. Join us after the jump for some very genki dancing men having a lot of body-slappin’ good fun!

Every time we make a post about guys crossdressing as girls, there are bound to be the people who take things in a positive light and appreciate their crossdressing efforts, the seasoned net surfers who lament that they’ve seen enough of guys looking like girls, and those who are inclined to delve deeper and think that we’re either encouraging such crossdressing behavior or discriminating these crossdressers.

Well, the Internet is an open platform for people to freely express themselves after all, be it in the form of comments, photographs, or even videos. You know you can always count on us to bring you the oddest stuff from the weird corners of the Internet. So get your pinch of salt and get ready to shoot us your wildest comments, because apparently there are guys out there who enjoy dancing in colorful tutus to their favorite anime idols’ songs!

If you’ve ever traveled abroad, you’ve probably had to deal with immigration personnel of some kind. And if you’re like most people, not all of those experiences have been exactly ideal. Of course, you can’t really blame the immigration workers–after all they have stressful jobs and have to deal with grumpy travelers who’ve just stepped off long flights.

You might say that they should focus on increasing the number of immigration personnel, streamlining the immigration process, or at least giving travelers free bottles of beer. And, in fact, the Philippines Bureau of Immigration agrees with you about the first two–but they also had another idea: Flash mobs!